24 May Learning to Learn
The overall quality of your learning process can always be improved and there are many different pathways which can be used to learn, especially regarding a kinetic skill. Learning martial arts has completely changed the way I learn as a whole. Methods that for were very strong for me at first have fallen by the wayside, and areas where I was initially weak have become my greatest strengths. Shoring up deficiencies in my learning process have made me a faster study on the mats and therefore able to progress much faster overall.
First let’s look at all the areas available for study:
- Watching your instructor demonstrate a move
- Listening to your instructor verbally describe a move
- Having someone else demonstrate the move on you
- Practicing the move yourself
- Reading Books with photos of different techniques
- Writing notes on techniques
- Reviewing notes on techniques
- Visualizing yourself doing a technique
- Watching video of yourself practicing the technique
- Watching highlight videos or live matches
- Watching video instructionals
This is a long list when you break it out and I do not know or know of any practitioners that are doing all of the above every week as a habit. Imagine the progress a student could make if they utilized all 11 methods in a dedicated schedule focused on learning a single technique.
When I began my own capacity was very limited. I pretty much was only effective in watching my instructors, listening to them and doing the move myself. Books were incredibly helpful for me early on. My ability to watch someone else’s movements and apply them was very limited. However throughout my journey I kept watching more and more videos. As I did I began to notice that my ability to learn by watching kept growing. Now my learning process has almost flipped. I prefer instructors to talk very little when teaching, and I mostly watch instructionals with the sound off, and prefer to watch live matches or highlights in order to pull the most information.
The key to all of this is to find what methods you are currently strong in and nurture those, but to also begin the process of being able to use other methods to speed up your overall process.